The Selector of Souls (52 page)

Damini wobbles her head. “Cleaning a baby out is not illegal—and sometimes it has to be done. People who say never ever don’t know what happens to women. And if a woman wants that, she should have it.”

Sister Anu says, “If anything a woman wants should be given to her, why didn’t we let Kiran-ji take Moses from Goldina?”

“
Huh!
Moses didn’t come from Kiran-ji’s body. Kiran-ji didn’t do the work of carrying him, birthing him.”

Sister Anu falls silent, gazing into the flames. Then she says, “How do
you
know if a woman really wants a cleaning? And tell me, was it her own decision or fear when Goldina gave up Moses for adoption?”

Damini says, “She would not have had the child if you had offered her pills or the ring or tied her inside. And she would not have had to give us her child if your padri had not said she would fry in hell for a cleaning.”

Sister Anu looks hurt. Damini hastens to explain.

“See, while Goldina was two-in-one and the child was unawakened, she was the head for both. The child’s story had not begun. But I don’t know how to tell what is women’s murrzi, what is fear. Was it murrzi or fear when my mother went to her self-cremation? Maybe both. Was it murrzi when my Mem-saab took pills and died? I think she thought no one was listening or ever would listen to her wishes. Was it Leela’s own wish, or fear, when she wanted a cleaning? Now she cries for her baby girl whose soul returned to brahman.”

Was it my murrzi or fear the night when I …

Sister Anu pulls her handkerchief from her sleeve and blows her nose. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mother, and Mem-saab. Goldina said your grandchild died a few days after she was born. So sad for Leela, too.” She wipes her eyes with the end of her shawl. “My brother’s and father’s funerals are coming to my mind. Tell, where are Chunilal’s brothers?” she says. “And his father?”

“Chunilal’s family doesn’t want Leela or her children to come near them—they are afraid of ayds.” Damini sweeps her shawl open like a
giant bird as she points to Leela, Kamna and Suresh all sitting cross-legged on the other side of the pyre. “My son is afraid too, but at least he came. He even carried Chunilal here, though it’s not his duty.”

Sister Anu says, “You can’t get AIDS from attending a funeral.”

“Ayds is an excuse,” says Damini wryly. “I made Suresh send Chunilal’s father a telegram the day we took him to Shimla. Then I called his father from the booth at the chai-stall. I said, ‘Did you get my telegram?’ He said, ‘I received one saying
Felicitations on Your Upcoming Wedding.’
The telegraph-man must have printed the wrong message from the code book. I said, ‘Your son is dying—come and say farewell.’ And he said that Chunilal had disappointed them, shamed them by living in Leela’s village after marriage, with his wife’s family. He called Chunilal a gharjamai! People like him dishonour the word ‘honour.’ ”

Mohan pulls out his flute and begins to blow.
“Chup!”
Leela shushes him, but he won’t stop and his hooting fills the valley, like the wails of a protesting animal.

“When people die,” Damini says beneath her breath, “it is a relief not to have to look after them. But how many others are there like him, who are so sick?”

A great rumbling sound approaches on the road above. Mohan’s flute fades when the rumbling stops. Lights beam into the dark from two trucks. Four men clamber from the cabs. They kerchief their heads in respect as they descend the hillside and draw close to Chunilal’s pyre.

“Chunilal’s voice still echoes in my head,” Damini confides to Sister Anu. “When we returned from Shimla, he said all my remedies were useless. It was time, he said, to make him a stinging nettle curry.”

Chunilal’s fellow truckers place stones, leaves and branches beside the flickering pyre in the name of the dead man, make their last namastes. Suresh comes forward to speak to them, but Damini cannot hear what they say. They look over their shoulders at the women, though, and must be asking why they are present. Eventually they
return uphill to their vehicles. The mountain ranges throw shadows at one another, and their valleys plunge deeper into darkness.

Sister Anu’s expectant look prompts Damini. “Chunilal said, ‘I have faced death every day on the Grand Trunk Road. I am not afraid to die … Make nettle curry tonight, make it with madhupatra,’ he said, ‘Let it be sweet when I drink it, and then stay with me …’ ”

“I refused him. He said, ‘I ask you, have pity. Don’t you see, I’m helpless as a woman, I’m as useless as Mohan. I can’t even bathe myself. I’m like a newborn girl. I cannot ask Leela to stain her karma, and don’t have the courage to do it myself.’

“ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not a selector of souls.’

“ ‘A man who cannot feed his family has no right to live.’

“I said, ‘You have love to give, even if you can’t work. My mem-saab was like that—old, but she had so much love and dignity, it didn’t matter that she couldn’t hear, couldn’t work.’

“ ‘You could have prevented her suffering too,’ Chunilal said. ‘Did you?’

“ ‘Of course I didn’t!’ I said.

“ ‘But why not put useless people out of our misery?’ he asked me. ‘My death is coming, anyway. Lord Yama is there in my dreams.’ I said, ‘All of us are dying, day by day, from the very moment of birth. Everyone suffers, not only you. How can I decide that your suffering is sufficient?’

“He said, ‘I have decided my suffering is sufficient.’

“I said, ‘You’re talking as if you have Dipreyshun. Even saab-log like Mem-saab and Sister Anu suffer, though they smile and look rich, healthy, beautiful. They complain, they cry just as you’re crying. Maybe Aman-ji suffers. Maybe even Kiran suffers.’ I told him, Sister, I told him this. And I said, ‘Sister Anu says every person has a story. If I kill you, it’ll be like paying for a movie but walking out at intermission.’

“ ‘Are my wishes no longer important?’ he said. ‘One day every story will end in India and everywhere in the world—think if
Americans or Russians set off another Big Big Bumb, the Atom Bumb. I’m just saying to end mine sooner.’

“ ‘Mohan can’t earn, doesn’t learn, will never understand money or farming. Should I put him out of his misery, too?’ I said. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Mohan’s my son. He will carry on my name after I am gone.’

“I said, ‘So a useless son is better than no son? Just for a name? What use is a name if a big bumb is going to end all our stories?’

“ ‘Not a name.
My
name. If I die, you make sure he gets married,’ he said. He really meant it! He thought I would trick some girl’s family into marrying Mohan! But when a man is sick and dying, you have to listen and not argue …”

“What did you say then?” says Sister Anu.

“I didn’t say anything about arranging a marriage for Mohan. I said, ‘I told you when I arrived, Chunilal, you are like a son to me. Even if you are useless and brainless, you have to live for Leela, for Mohan, for Kamna …’ ”

Sister Anu has become a pair of ears for Damini, listening as night blankets the mountains.

When the moon takes shape, Damini says, “Do you know if that is the same moon my sisters see?”

“It’s the same,” says Sister Anu. “Where are your sisters?”

“Rajasthan. My oldest sister has gone to the next life, the second one became oldest, and she was married into a family in Loharki. My middle sister is now in Bharariya, and the next is married in Mava. The villages are all close to Khetolai, where we grew up. Only I was sent so far away. Sister,” she says, struck with a sudden fear, “what if we are dead and this is the next life?”

Sister Anu says, “Then we’d have no experience. We’d feel no change and have no stories.”

Damini clasps her head in her hands to think more deeply. Eventually she says, “I feel cold. And the ground is hard; I have experience. The moon is higher than it was a few hours ago. Kamna,
Suresh and Leela were sitting together, but are now sleeping on the ground. And Chunilal’s body is burning away, so there is change.”

“And we might find ourselves in another place,” says Anu. “Christians call it hell or heaven.”

“In another place—like Pakistan?” A myriad questions are rising within her. “Which is farther from here, Pakistan or the moon?”

“The moon.”

“I can see the moon, but not Pakistan? Still, I know Pakistan is there because Mem-saab escaped it in 1947, and she said that place was born like a bloody twin at midnight with India. Maybe your Christian hell is like Pakistan.”

“People in Pakistan who escaped from India during Partition might think hell is like India.”

“Has anyone ever escaped hell to tell you such a place is there?”

“No, but—”

“Why don’t people in Pakistan believe in gods like Lord Golunath?”

“They believe their Prophet is more powerful.”

“Does Muhammad-ji speak to them?”

“No, he’s dead, like our Christ—but Shafiq Sheikh tells me how much his life story inspires all Muslims.”

“I tell you! Nothing ever finishes,” Damini says. “The spirits of the dead are always around, causing trouble, judging the living. Even when we die, it’s not over.”

“We’re all afraid to die.”

“Huh! Not I! Next minute I’ll be alive again, and again it begins. You Christians and Muslims who only have one life are afraid to die.”

“Remember the song, Zindagi aur kuch bhi nahin, teri meri kahani hai?”

Damini nods, “Wait, don’t tell me—I’ll remember the movie.” In a moment she says,
“Shor.”

“Yes, the song says, Life is nothing more than your story, my story. Muhammad’s body, Christ’s body, Chunilal’s body—all may be gone, but their story remains.”

The vigil continues till birdsong stirs at dawn. Sister Anu again takes Damini’s hand in her light-skinned one. “Bahut avsos hai,” she says.

There is great sympathy. How comforting is her presence; Damini is surprised.

There are worse things than untouchables afraid to touch you, or pandits who refuse to chant at your funeral, or families who do not wish to know you. When Damini, Leela, Suresh, Kamna and Mohan return home at dawn, tired and stiff from their vigil beside Chunilal’s pyre all night, Amanjit Singh’s manager, that pitiless prune of a man, is waiting with a cheque for Rs. 35,000. For Chunilal’s land, he says.

He waves a paper before their astonished faces. “Sale deed,” he says.

“What sale deed?” Suresh pushes forward, protectively.

The manager stops waving the paper and brings it under the lantern light. He does not allow them to touch it.

Mohan points proudly to his name—signed large and clear, and in English—at the bottom.

Leela boxes Mohan’s ears till Damini stays her hand. Because Mohan couldn’t know his land is worth ten times that amount. The boy crouches in a corner and hides his face in the circle of his arms. The manager waits as if he’s seen this happen on other farms.

Suresh says, “I’m head of this family, now.”

“No, he is not,” says Leela to the manager. “I am still alive, still his elder. And Mohan is Chunilal’s heir. But Mohan should not have signed this deed.”

Suresh’s eyes flash, his chest puffs out and he draws himself up as if readying to strike someone.

Damini comes between. She says to the manager, “The land belonged to my husband Piara Singh and was part of Leela’s dowry before it ever belonged to Chunilal. You understand? It was her stridhan. Her brother cannot take it, and her son cannot sign it away.”

“It was a gift to her husband,” says Suresh. “And since he’s gone, it comes back to our family.”

The manager shrugs. “Amanjit-ji will build a villa here, not a cottage,” he says, as if everyone should appreciate the honour bestowed upon the land. Leela and her family, he says, have a month in which to move.

“Move where?” says Leela. “This is my house.”

The manager says, “Tell them to take the cheque, old amma. No one else will give you so much. Leela could fall or have an accident tomorrow, or Amanjit-ji can build a latrine over your water supply. Then with what face can you come asking for such a large cheque?”

“Take that cheque back to Aman-ji,” Leela says to the manager, “Let him come and till these terraces himself, if he wants. He can build a cottage for us, or around us, because I am not moving.”

When the manager has left, Damini says wretchedly, “I have brought you bad luck ever since I came here. A woman spending her old age with a daughter, taking from a daughter’s home. I’m sure Kiran-ji made Aman-ji do this, because I refused to do what she wanted.”

“Why didn’t you do whatever she wanted?” says Suresh. “So what if she wanted you to polish the silver or something?”

“She wanted me to kill a baby.”

“Girl?”

Damini nods slowly, her gaze on her son’s face.

“Then what?”

“I said no.”

“And this is the result.”

Men have to be told everything. Should she tell Suresh whose child she saved from Kiran’s clutches that night? Damini bites her tongue.
Not now
.

“Aman-ji would have done this whether you were here or not,” says Leela. “Kiran-ji may have speeded up his plans. Saab-women are not accustomed to swallowing slowly if they are made to eat thorns.” She
turns to Suresh. “Tell me brother, what should I do?” she says, in a tone that mollifies and admires.